Kevin Law argues China won't surpass the U.S. as the world's dominant power. He cites unsustainable economic growth driven by unproductive investments like shopping malls, China's growth rate falling from 10% to 6% over a decade, and claims authoritarianism stifles innovation compared to American democracy.
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Hi, my name is Kevin. Thanks for watching my video, and Nico, thanks for being my opponent. It is my pleasure. First of all, I disagree with the criteria that the determination of which country will be the most dominant nation should include the military factor, because there are too many confidentiality about the military both in the US and China, so we won't have enough evidence and information for this debate. Before I respond to your argument, I would like to state mine to provide a better understanding. Today I will offer 2 counter-contentions to prove that China will not overtake the US as the most dominant nation in the world. The first counter-contention is the truth behind China's economy. China will not sustain the level of growth that they are achieving right now. According to NPR on May 9th, 2019, the economist George Magnus, who is an associate researcher at China Centre at Oxford University. He shared that most of the growth of China's economy is from investment. There is a trend that the GDP growth rate has slowed down from 10% to 6% till now over the past 10 years, and it is going to slow down even more in the future because there is a lot of money that China invested in things that will not pay off. Some of the examples are building shopping malls and apartment complexes. There are just too many. Eventually, all these investments will be worthless and the borrowers will not be able to pay back their money to the financial institutions. This will cause a serious backfire and will affect the Chinese economy. The reason why China's economy has risen drastically over the past 2 decades is that China is a developing country. After Mao Zedong's dictatorship, China then started to develop its country and open to the public, open to the foreign countries in year 1972. It is normal to see a higher rate of GDP for the developing country, but once the country's basic infrastructure has finished built up, it is very difficult to compare who has a powerful economy. Furthermore, China has put too much money in worthless investment. Along the way, we can see their economy will definitely drop. The second counter-contention is China's dictatorship versus American Democracy. There are too many regulations and barriers for people to showcase their talents in development in China. According to NPR on May 9th, 2019, in order to have advanced economy, one nation has to compete with other nations across a lot of high-tech sectors. However, the dictatorship in China restricted people to develop the technology and must follow the authority Even though the strategies from the authority will not be effective. Although China plans to invest $1.5 trillion in technology for the next five years, of course, they might be a better. They might be able to compete the U.S. in certain fields in the technology such as AI and green energy because they are really good at that. But there is still doubts that China can overtake the world like the U.S. does. Because they don't allow their people to fully showcase their talent like the American does. So as for these two counter-contentions, I object that China will eventually overtake the U.S. as the most dominant nations in the world. And now let's get back to Nicole's argument. Her first argument is China's developing economy. She mentioned that China twenty-five years ago, the economy was smaller than the size of Italy. And now it has become 24 times bigger and stronger and ranked 2nd in the world just behind America. Well, according to my first counter-contention, China is a developing country back then until now, and also due to the large population, the GDP looks good. Also, there are evidence shows that they will have backfire because they put a lot of money into real estate development. They are not worth investing for. So there is no guarantee that China can surpass the US economy because China's GDP will definitely drop in the future. Her second argument is China's developing military. She mentioned that the Pentagon reviewed the strength of the China military can defeat America's confrontations along its border. What about sending missiles from the United States? Or nuclear powers, airstrikes, and other kinds of attacks. The strength of military power cannot just based on the confrontations and that China has the best missile, Dongfeng-41, in the world. Maybe China has the best defense systems in the world, we don't know. The point is we will never know because there are too many confidentiality about military. We can't get enough access to the classified information. The third argument is China's developing technology. Indeed, China has been benefited by the American aid, and they even stole American intellectual property such as F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. But America has taken actions to avoid these incidents from happening again. The best example is President Trump's deported many suspicious students from China and stricken the immigration rules to China citizens. Also, if China is really competitive, why would they do something unethical to steal classified information and intellectual property from the US or from all over the world? The chance of China stealing technology from America is getting slimmer. And also, based on my second counter-contention, China limits its own people to showcase their talents while the US accepted talented people from all over the world to create the best technology and economy. So again, I hereby assert that China will not overtake the US as the most dominant nation in the world.
